Gordon Dickson - Time Storm

“She really doesn’t like you, either, you know,” Marie told me, the evening of the third day Paula had spent with us. “She doesn’t like anyone.”

“She can’t afford to,” I said. “She’s a ruler. She’s got to keep her head clear of likes and dislikes for individuals so she can make her decisions strictly on the basis of whether something is a good thing for her people, or not.”

“A good thing for her or not, you mean,” said Marie.

That was unusually outspoken for Marie. But the more I thought over what I had said to her, the more I liked the ring of my own words. I went to Ellen’s room and tried the same speech on her.

Ellen snorted.

“Is that supposed to be an answer?” I said. “All right, tell me. Exactly what is it that’s wrong with Paula?”

“Nothing’s wrong with her,” said Ellen.

“Well, you must think something’s wrong or you wouldn’t be acting this way. What is it?”

“You.”

“Me?”

“You want to be a damn fool, go ahead and be one.”

I lost my temper.

“How can I be a damn fool? I’ve got to find some way to deal with her and do it with gloves on. She can wipe us all off the map if I don’t!”

Ellen got up out of bed, put on her clothes and went for a walk —at three in the morning. Nobody but she could have done something like that with such finality and emphasis. Her back was an exclamation mark going out the door.

Bill did not like her either. Neither did Doc. For that matter, neither did the Old Man, who always disappeared when Paula came on the scene. I began to feel like the tragic hero in a Greek play with the chorus in unison warning me of disaster at every step. I did not mention any of this to Paula; but she evidently sensed some of it at least, because along about the end of the week she got off on a subject that was particularly timely in view of the situation.

“... It is a lonely life,” she said, apropos of something I had said. We were taking a stroll through the woods below the summer palace early in the morning. “Rank does more than isolate you socially. Do you realize, Marc, you’re essentially the only person in the world I can talk to on the level, so to speak? With everyone else, I have to remember I’m the Empress. But it’s not even that so much as having to put myself in the balance sometimes against everyone around me when it comes to making decisions. Every so often, all the advice I get is one-sided; and sometimes I have to brace myself to turn it all down and go just the opposite way, because when it gets down to it I have to trust my own decision more than all of theirs or else I’m not a fit ruler.”

“I know what you mean,” I said.

“Sure you do.” She glanced at me for a moment, then looked ahead the way we were walking. “You can’t take on responsibility without taking on everything else that goes with it.”

She stopped and turned to face me. I stopped also, necessarily, and turned toward her.

“That’s why it would mean so much to have you with me, Marc,” she said. “I know you’ve got your own work with the time storm. I’ve only just begun to realize these last few days how important that is. But what you’re needed more for, now, is to help me unify this torn-up Earth we’ve got and put it on a single, working community basis. That’s your higher responsibility, at the moment”

“And if I’m not with you, I’m against you?”

“Oh, Marc!” she said, sadly. “I’m not a monster.”

I felt slightly ashamed of myself. It was a fact that, so far, I had seen nothing in her that was not reasonable to the point of being admirable. The only evidence I had ever had that contradicted this was contained in the large body of rumor about her; and I had some experience with rumors, having heard some of the ones that circulated about me.

“Well,” I said, “how much time are you asking me to invest?”

“A couple of years at the most.” She looked sideways at me as we walked. “Certainly no more than that.”

“You think you can take over the world in two years? That’s better than Alexander’s record, and he was only thinking about the Asian continent.”

“There aren’t that many people nowadays. You know that as well as I do,” she said. “And it’s a matter of contacting just the large population centers. Once those are organized, the small communities in each area and the individuals will want to adjust to the situation on their own.”

“Two years...” I said. All at once, it seemed like a long time away from here, away from the library and Porniarsk’s workroom.

“Look,” she said, stopping again. Once more we faced each other and, for the first time since I had known her, she touched me, putting a hand lightly on my arm. “Let’s forget about it for today. Why don’t we do something different? You let me entertain you for a change.”

“How?”

“We’ll fly to my base camp and have lunch there. You can see for yourself what my regular soldiers are like and why I think it won’t take even two years to bring order to the world.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “The others may worry....”

“Even if they do, it’ll do them good,” she said. “When they see you coming back safe and sound after going off alone with me, they’ll understand I’m no one to be afraid of.”

“All right.”

We went back up to the palace. I did not quite feel like telling Ellen or Marie I was taking a solo jaunt into Paula’s armed camp, so I looked for Bill or Doc. Doc was the one I found first; and he took the idea of my going calmly enough. In fact, it seemed to me his eyes even lit up a bit at the idea.

“Want me to come?” he asked.

“It’s not necessary—” I checked myself. “Come to think of it, why not? You may be able to see some things there I won’t.”

I sent him to tell Bill we were both going and went back to explain to Paula that there would be two of us, feeling somewhat smug with the notion that I had taken some of the force out of the objections the others would have to my going entirely alone.

“Of course, bring him,” said Paula graciously, when I mentioned that I couldn’t come after all, unless I had someone like Doc along with me. It had occurred to me that, just as I had, she might be underestimating Doc because of his youth. I had learned better during the past few months; but if she was making the same initial error, it could do us no harm and might turn out to our advantage. On the helicopter ride to her camp, accordingly, I watched her closely for any sign that this was the case, but saw no clear signals either way. She was friendly but a little condescending to him, which could mean that she did not, in fact, recognize his worth, or simply that she lumped him in with all those human bodies she looked down on from her status as Empress.

The camp, when we got there, was impressive enough. Paula’s soldiers might or might not love her, as rumor had it, but they were well-uniformed, well-armed, and under good discipline. Their field tents were pitched in a hollow square with Paula’s clump of larger tents at the center, so that these were protected on all sides. The helicopter that brought us put us down in the open space outside this interior clump of tents and within the camp area. If Paula had been intending to make me prisoner once she had me here, she would have had no difficulty once we had landed. There were armed guards ten deep around me in all directions.

But as it was, our visit was nothing but pleasant. Paula evidently travelled with a full complement of personal servants—I estimated at least two full helicopter-loads worth, which meant that she might not have needed to be so saving of fuel as I had guessed —including a number of younger women, none of them quite as good-looking as she was, but close enough. These were dressed as unpractically as she was, with an eye to appearance rather than practicality; and this puzzled me until I began to realize that their primary job, or at least their highly important secondary job, was to act as ornaments and geishas. They were all over Doc and me while we were having cocktails before lunch, and they both served and joined us at the meal itself.